Seeking Your College Application Essays About Money

Did you apply for college this year and write an undergraduate application essay about money, work, social class or related topics? If so, I’d like to see it.

I write the personal finance column for The New York Times, and since 2013 I’ve been collecting as many essays like this as I can find each spring and publishing a handful of great ones in early May. You can read a selection of essays from 2017 here.

What qualifies? A description of your job at McDonald’s is welcome, as are musings on what it’s like to have no earthly idea what you want to be when you grow up. We’ve published stories about the struggles of families who are poor and disquisitions on towns where parents can cover for their children’s recklessness with their cash and connections. Reckoning with wealth (yours or that of others) is welcome, as are all attempts to wrestle with its absence and the impact of that.

Please submit your essays to us by Wednesday, April 25, using the form on this page. We’ll publish a few of them during the first weekend in May and pay the writers our normal freelance rate.

Also, anyone who wants to send in a bit of multimedia to go with the essay is welcome to do so below. Videos, Instagram Stories or Snapchat stories are all fine. If you are submitting a story from either Instagram or Snapchat, please download it and send it as a video file.

Not including multimedia will not hurt your chances, but we’re open to the possibility that anything else you might want to include besides your words could bring your relationship with money to life.